standpoint of the hero of the drama, this hope of future vindication which flashes through the fierceness of the conflict, far from making it a caricature,[1] gives to the delineation of his faith, which does not forsake God, the final perfecting stroke. Job is, as he thinks, meeting certain death. Why then should not the poet allow him to give utterance to that demand of faith, that he, even if God should permit him apparently to die the sinner's death, nevertheless cannot remain unvindicated? Why should he not allow him here, in the middle of the drama, to rise from the thought, that the cry of his blood should not ascend in vain, to the thought that this vindication of his blood, as of one who is innocent, should not take place without his being consciously present, and beholding with his own eyes the God by whose judicial wrath he is overwhelmed, as his Redeemer? This hope, regarded in the light of the later perception of the plan of redemption, is none other than the hope of a resurrection; but it appears here only in the germ, and comes forward as purely personal: Job rises from the dust, and, after the storm of wrath is passed, sees Eloah, as one who acknowledges him in love, while his surviving opponents fall before the tribunal of this very God. It is therefore not a share in the resurrection of the righteous (in Isa 26, which is uttered prophetically, but first of all nationally), and not a share in the general resurrection of the dead (first expressed in Dan 12:2), with which Job consoled himself; he does not speak of what shall happen at the end of the days, but of a purely personal matter after his death. Considering himself as one who must die, and thinking of himself as deceased, and indeed, according to appearance, overwhelmed by the
- ↑ If Job could say, like Tobia, Job 2:1-13 :17f., Vulg.: filii sanctorum sumus et vitam illam exspectamus, quam Deus daturus est his qui fidem suam nunquam mutant ab eo, his conduct would certainly be different; but what he expresses in Job 19:25-27 is very far removed from this confession of faith of Tobia.
